Final Shot
by storywriter30
Summary: He hurt his wife and took his boss. He told them he had to finish this himself.


Post 10.24 AU

* * *

He can hear her staring at him and he knows that when he turns around she'll still be in her nightshirt, basked in the glow of the hallway. The goodbye he's saying right now is hard enough. The next will only be harder.

"Are you _trying_ to wake her?" she asks, voice low and barely there.

He sighs; he's really not. He drops one more kiss on her forehead and then pushes himself up from her bed. He'll see her soon; he will.

Tony turns to his wife and she 's shaking her head at him in the doorway, but she can't hide the small smile that creeps across her features. Ziva reaches for his hand and pulls him out into the hallway. She gently pulls the door shut behind him.

"It would have only been harder on you if you had woken her up."

He sighs. "I know." He imagines her sleepy eyes fluttering open, his name fluttering off her lips. Mariah would wrap her arms around his neck and beg him not to go. Ziva's right. It would have only been harder on him if she were to wake up.

He pulls Ziva closer and tucks her into him.

"I'm going to miss you," he whispers.

She is silent for a moment and it unnerves him. He doesn't know what to say and he doesn't know what's going through her head. She sighs and curls his shirt into her fist. And then she looks up at him.

"I need you to tell me that this is all about Gibbs."

"What?" he asks.

"Tony," she protests and steps back from him. She knows he heard her. Her hands go to her hips. "Look me in the eye and tell me that this is only about Gibbs."

He blinks a couple of times and lowers his head. He kisses her cheek. "I can't lie to you, Ziva." He whispers.

"Please don't do this for me. It does not give me any peace or satisfaction. I would rather you here."

"Gibbs would want me to finish this."

"Not for him he wouldn't and not if I didn't want you to."

"Ziva…"

"If you need to do it…for…whatever meaning…then go, but Tony, you do not need to do for us. Especially me."

He sighs again and pulls her closer. He doesn't want to go, but there is a knawing inside of him. He has to. He hurt his wife and he took his boss. If someone is going to end this, it's going to be him.

* * *

The plane ride is long and bumpy and he worries more than once that they're going down. He tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut and instead tries to think of his daughter. She's getting out of school by now and Ziva's there to meet her. It's hard to believe that Mariah's six years old. He feels like it was just the other day that he was boarding another flight to the Middle East, in search of her wayward mother, but that was almost a lifetime ago. Almost a lifetime, but not quite. He still has so much more to live for.

And he feels that his boss had the same. It was not Gibbs' time to go. Not even close. He was young and healthy and Tony would argue that he was finally happy again. He loved spending time with Mariah and there's no doubt that the spring had returned to his step when Ziva returned. Saturday night Mariah always spent time in Gibbs' basement, learning how to sand and fine wood. She'd made Ziva a frame for Mother's Day last year and for Christmas he'd gotten a DVD case. It was no more than an oversized box, but he loved it all the same.

And yet, that would be the end of that. He certainly wasn't capable of teaching his daughter the art of wood crafting and neither was her other living Grandfather. Many things had changed since Mariah's death, but Senior was not one of them.

Of these six years, the last two months have seen the most change of all.

He remembers the January day like it was yesterday. New Year's Day. They'd wrapped a case late the night before and instead of each heading their separate ways, the team had decided to watch the ball drop together in MTAC. Ellie's husband came in with their three-year old son Matthew, Delilah brought in the twins and Ziva and Mariah joined them. It was a full house with their big, happy and certainly unconventional family all together to ring in the New Year. He kissed his wife at Midnight and pulled his daughter up to his hip.

The new year was looking mighty fine indeed. And then things went downhill. They were on their way towards the elevator when Gibbs' desk phone rang. And then a bomb threat was called in. Followed by evidence that someone had Delilah and the twins. And then thirty hours later Gibbs jumped over a bomb that was in too close proximity to Matthew. Someone wasn't walking out alive and Gibbs would be dammed if that were three-year old Matthew Bishop.

The McGee's, the Bishops, their families came so close to being in ruins. Tony always knew that Gibbs would go out in blaze of glory. He just never thought that day would come so soon.

It was the information that they discovered the next day that shocked Tony to his core. Their suspect was forty-year old Abdul Haqq Ulmann. He'd recently come out hiding after the terrorist cell that he'd been remotely running for almost twenty years had been cut of at the head by a small American counter terrorism team rescuing one of their own. He chokes on his coffee as he reads the small snippet of information from the file.

"Are you okay?" Ellie asks from the floor.

"No," he stands, "No, I'm not." He pulls the file up on McGee's computer and waits as he scans the personnel summary.

"Ulmann." He breathes. "A decade in hiding."

The two men are out of the bullpen and up the stairs toward the director's office before their third partner even has a clue about what is going on, but she follows anyway and chases them up the stairs.

"Guys, what is going on?"

McGee looks over his shoulder. "It's a really long story."

"Try me."

McGee stops at the top of the stairs and turns to Bishop. He waits for Tony to continue on this way towards the Vance's office before taking a seat on the stairs. Ellie joins him.

"The mission that we never talk about," he begins, "The one we always reference. The reason that things are the way they are. Years ago, Ziva went back to Israel –"

Ellie cuts him off. "Right, that's when I came."

"No," McGee shakes his head. "Before that. In 2009, she left the team for extremely convoluted reasons and long story short – her father, who was basically…well, back then he was a jackass. He was trying when he died, but back then he only wanted Ziva for her skills. So Ziva goes back to Mossad. Her team abandons her, but she continues with the mission because telling Daddy David that she failed would've signed her death certificate. So she tries to take a thirty man terrorist camp down herself. Obviously, even for Ziva, that's just not possible. She ends up captive at the hands of a terrorist named Saleem Ulman." He lets that sink into her for a minute before continuing. "Tony's gut went crazy that summer. He spent three months tracking down Saleem. We were almost positive that Ziva was dead, but Tony was out for blood so I went with him and we got ourselves captured. Turns out, Ziva was alive. Barely. All those things you read about happening to women in captivity in the war zone – they're true. She was battered and the Ziva we got back isn't the one who left. I mean, it changed her. It changed all of us."

"The guy who killed Gibbs is avenging his brother."

"Yeah," McGee says, "And I'm sure that bomb was meant for Mariah and not Matthew."

She takes a sharp in take of breath when the memory of her son and his proximity to the bomb is brought up. She looks toward the Director's office and then back at McGee. "So what's Tony doing right now?"

"He's probably getting authorization to track and take out Abdul Haqq Ulmann. He always regretted no being able to kill Saleem himself and now that Gibbs is gone and at the hands of this guy, he won't rest until he shoots this guy between the eyes."

* * *

There's twenty Navy SEALs behind him. He can feel them almost breathing down his neck. And yet, he feels alone. He shouldn't because he was very clear that McGee and Bishop were not allowed to join him. He wanted to do this on his own. He had to.

They stalk into the camp and it couldn't be any more different than the one he was in over ten years ago. It's high up in the mountains and they're navigating through caves.

And then he hears someone shout something in Arabic and suddenly guns are a blazing and he's tracking forward. Shooting and moving. Shooting and moving. Forward into the darkness.

In the end, he isn't the one who kills Abdul. Captain Andrew Wilder pulls the triggers as Tony gets in a shoot and hide match with one of his bodyguards. They dessimate the team and the wound to his thigh is simply collateral. That's what he'll tell his wife.

* * *

"Collateral," she repeats.

He's in Germany, getting his wound stitched and cleaned and sutured.

"It's a flesh wound," he promises. "Nothing serious. You'll just get me home for a week or two."

She sighs and goes silent before saying, "Tony, I would've killed you if you died in those mountains."

"Well, ninja, that would've been difficult being that –"

She cuts him off and he's pretty sure it's because she doesn't want him to finish his sentence. "I would have found away."

* * *

McGee picks him up from the airport and drives him home. His leg is all bandaged up, but he manages to hobble his way up the stairs and to their apartment. Home has never looked so good.

Tim's got the key inserted into the lock when the door flings open and Mariah nearly barrels into her father before being intercepted by her ever doting Uncle.

"What did I say about Daddy's leg?" Ziva asks from inside. Tony enters and follows her voice and they both try to look casual, but their feelings are anything but and Ziva pushes herself off of the counter before crashing herself against him. Her grip on his neck is desperate and he swears she's trying to make them one instead of two.

Somewhere inside of his head he can hear McGee engaging Mariah, but mostly he is distracted by the women shaking against him.

"Hey," he says, "I said I'd be back."

She nods.

"I'm sorry," he says, "But between you and Gibbs, I had to. They hurt you and then took him."

"Rule 43." She says.

"Come back to the girls," he parrots.

"You did."


End file.
